“No. I believe it mainly concerns a woman,” the young man replied. “My father had no financial worries. He was, as you know, a rich man. Evidently he was anxious on my behalf, or he would not have given Edgson that message. Ah! If his lips could only speak again—poor, dear guv’nor.”
And the young man sighed.
“Perhaps Edgson knows something?” the solicitor suggested.
“He knows nothing. He only suspects that there is a lady concerned in it, for my father, before his death, referred to ‘her’.”
“Your respected father was my client and friend through many years,” said Mr Kellaway. “As far as I know, he had no secrets from me.”
Raife looked him straight in the face for a few moments without speaking. Like all undergraduates he had no great liking for lawyers.
“Look here, Kellaway,” he said slowly. “Are you speaking the truth?”
“The absolute truth,” was the other’s grave reply.
“Then you know of no secret of my father’s. None—eh?”
“Ah, that is quite a different question,” the solicitor said. “During the many years I have acted for your late father I have been entrusted with many of his secrets—secrets of his private affairs and suchlike matters with which a man naturally trusts his lawyer. But there was nothing out of the common concerning any of them.”